NAS Report on Ecological Risk Assessment for Endangered and Threatened Species under FIFRA and ESA Now Available

Pesticide News Story: NAS Report on Ecological Risk Assessment for Endangered and Threatened Species under FIFRA and ESA Now Available

For Release: April 30, 2013

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), is announcing the availability of a report developed by the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council outlining recommendations on specific scientific and technical issues related to the development of endangered and threatened species risk assessments for pesticides that are compliant with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). The EPA, USDA, FWS and NMFS asked the NRC to consider a range of scientific and technical issues including:

identifying best available scientific data and information;

considering sub-lethal, indirect and cumulative effects;

assessing the effects of chemical mixtures and inert ingredients;

analyzing the effects of pesticide use through the use of models;

incorporating uncertainties into the evaluations; and

using geospatial information and datasets that can be employed by the agencies in the course of these assessments.

EPA and its federal partners thank NRC for undertaking this review and providing their recommendations. After reviewing the NRC’s recommendations on these scientific and technical issues, the EPA and its federal partners will determine how these recommendations can be implemented and incorporated into the scientific approaches for developing listed species risk assessments. It is anticipated that any draft guidance and/or science policies developed by EPA and its federal partners as a result of the NAS recommendations would be released for public comment prior to implementation. The NAS report is available at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18344. The NAS press release is available at: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=18344.